This afternoon there was a report that Paramount definitely has plans for a fourth Transformers movie to be released in 2014. That wasn’t a big surprise, as we’ve been reliably certain that a fourth, and possibly a fifth movie have been in development for the past few months.

Now producer Lorenzo DiBonaventura says that the fourth film is definitely planned for 2014, and that Michael Bay will direct, despite any back and forth statements to the contrary. What’s the story, and what characters are involved? They don’t know yet. Read on for more details, including a statement from Bay with a specific release date.

Michael’s going to direct it, and it’ll be in the summer of 2014. We’ll be releasing it [then]… I think the challenge there is we really are going to do a reboot there, and what that’s going to be we don’t even know yet.

Asked about returning cast the answer was,

No, it’s so silly. We gotta get a story first. You can’t pick characters until you have a story. It’s a funny thing, it’s not… what I perceive Spider-Man to be is just a redoing of the whole thing. It’s not [that]. It’s an evolution, there’s still continuity that’s going on. There’ll be a lot of new cast, whether there’s anyone from the first we don’t even know yet. The truth is, there’s going to be a whole new story. The characters that will come along will be Optimus and Bumblebee, I’m sure.

There has been a lot of speculation about what I’m going to do next and when or if I will do another Transformers. So let me set the record straight.

I have just concluded a deal with Paramount to do two movies, but it won’t be two Transformers.

I will first do ‘Pain & Gain’ with Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.

Then I will do the next Transformers for release on June 29, 2014.

-Michael Bay

So Paramount paying for Pain & Gain, the film that Bay has wanted to make for a few years, has paid off for both director and studio. He gets to make his ‘smaller’ movie, and the director is signed and sealed for at least one more giant robot film, with more details no doubt to come in the coming months.